


those were the best days of my life

by gay_writes_with_mac



Series: Platonic Oneshots [8]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: And It's Rubbed Off On Tara, Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Glenn Rhee Is A Dumbass, I'll tag it, Mac Loving Bryan Adams On Main, Mommy Issues, Racism, Talent Shows, a little bit??, but still, it's literally one line, kind of???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27259951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: As usual, Glenn comes up with a grand idea. And as usual, Tara follows along.
Relationships: Tara Chambler & Glenn Rhee
Series: Platonic Oneshots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793905
Kudos: 8





	those were the best days of my life

Glenn can’t go a day without another grand idea. Tara’s been tagging along after him long enough to have helped him build a spaceship out of cardboard (he wanted to go to the moon,) bottle their own “alcohol” in the basement (Glenn had learned about Prohibition and decided to enter the business of speakeasies,) and permanently stain Ms. Rhee’s dryer blue (she’s still not clear on what the plan was with all those pens in Glenn’s best dress pants.)

In fact, that was how they met. Glenn had a brilliant idea for inventing the process of human flight and had picked Tara as his wingman to sit at the top of the hill and film this historic journey and take notes. They couldn’t get ahold of a camera, but Glenn reckoned that if Tara - he’d known her for five minutes and he’d already started calling her his best friend - took good enough notes, that would do for the first dry run. So Tara, age six, sat at the top of the big hill outside the school while they waited for their parents to come pick them up late - Glenn’s mom because she was working and Tara’s mom because she was getting her weekly mani-pedi and she couldn’t drive to fetch her daughter with wet nails. And Glenn, also age six, attached his brilliant, flashing cardboard masterpieces of wings to his shirt, leapt into the air, deployed the garbage bag parachutes, and flapped desperately.

Tara held his hand in the nurse’s office while she splinted his broken nose and iced his bruises and that settled it. They were best friends.

So when Glenn reveals his latest scheme at age sixteen, it’s practically understood that Tara’s going to go along with it.

“We’re going to start a band!” He says by means of a greeting, sliding his Mickey Mouse lunch box down to his usual seat across from Tara at the loser table. They’re the only two residents as of late.

“Oh,  _ we  _ are, huh?” Tara asks, mostly just to tease. “Glenn, I don’t know how to play anything.”

“I’ll teach you on my old guitar. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“What if I’m no good?”

“You’ll be fantastic.”

“Only two of us? For a whole band?”

“Indigo Girls, Nelson Twins, They Might Be Giants, The Proclaimers-”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Tara laughs, stabbing a fork into the lump of grey, gelatinous meat claiming to be meatloaf on her cafeteria tray. “Okay, so a band. Are we writing our own shit?”

Glenn raises an eyebrow in answer, stuffing a handful of cheese puffs - his mom packs his lunches - into his mouth. “Do _you_ wanna try songwriting?”  
“Over my dead body.”

Glenn wiggles his eyebrows at her, reaching over and gently poking Tara’s hand with her own plastic knife. “That can be arranged-”

“If you kill me, you’re gonna have to forge your own way as a soloist.” But Tara laughs anyway, snatching the knife to prod him back. “Covers, then. How are we making our grand debut?”

He grins, and shoves a flyer across the table, narrowly missing a ketchup stain leftover from the last period that Tara couldn’t be assed to wipe up. The front of it reads in goofy cartoon letters:  _ TALENT SHOW!! _

“You  _ can’t  _ be serious.”

“Serious as sin.”

Tara shakes her head, pushing the flyer back over to him. “Glenn, this - this is in  _ two weeks _ .”

“So?”

“I can’t learn to play the guitar in  _ two weeks!” _

“Not with that attitude,” Glenn replies smartly, smiling angelically at her from across the table. Tara doesn’t argue. She already knows she’ll go along with it anyway.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tara has her own key to the Rhee house - has since she was ten. She doesn’t hesitate to let herself in, stopping in the kitchen for a hug for Glenn’s mom. After a few minutes of bemoaning how skinny she is - and a bowl of cheese puffs pushed into her hands for her and Glenn to share - Ms. Rhee lets her go with one final ruffle of her hair. Tara makes it a whole ten feet before she gets stopped again, this time by Mina and Penny, who heard her voice in the kitchen and came scampering to throw their arms around her waist, practically shrieking with excitement. Tara tenses up without even meaning to, expecting a shout for them to calm down from the kitchen, even though she knows full well that it’ll never come.

After gently disentangling herself from the little octopuses that are Glenn’s sisters, she makes her way up to his attic bedroom without being waylaid again. Glenn’s sprawled out across his bed, his tongue stuck out in concentration as he studies a binder of faded old sheet music. But when he sees Tara come in, he sits bolt up-right, pumping a fist silently when he sees the offering of cheese puffs in her hands. 

“Fuck  _ yes,  _ dude - come here, come sit down, look at some songs with me-”

Tara does as she’s told, flopping down next to him and setting the cheese puffs in between them, looking up at the slightly-yellowed pages in his hands. “Dude, I don’t even know how to  _ start  _ reading that.”

“You’ll pick it up.” Glenn digs into the bowl of cheese puffs, stuffing a handful into his mouth, and his next words are muffled slightly. “I’m thinking  _ this  _ one.”

He waves a certain piece of music around aimlessly, and Tara snorts out loud when he finally stops moving it long enough for her to make out the title. 

_ “Sixty-nine- _ ”

“It means the  _ year,  _ Tara-”

“ _ - _ and the year is _ sixty-nine-” _

“Get your mind out of the gutter!”

“Get your sheet music out of the gutter!”

Tara finally gets herself under control, and Glenn nods approvingly, his disappointed glare highly undermined by the corner of his mouth determinedly twitching.

“As I was saying, the  _ Summer of ‘69 _ -”

That sets Tara off again, and Glenn folds his arms at her, a disapproving expression he must have learned from his mom on his face. She finally gets it together again, and he gives her a sanctimonious nod. 

“As I was  _ saying- _ ”

“Don’t say the name of it or I’ll start laughing again-”

“The  _ song-  _ I think you can learn it in two weeks. C’mon, I’ll start teaching you. You’ll get it down.”

Tara sighs. Looks at the sheet music.

“Glenn, that looks like a typewriter sneezed on some paper.”

“At least  _ try. _ ”

“...okay. Okay. I’ll try.”

Glenn pumps a fist and then throws a cheese puff at her. Tara dives just in time to catch it in her mouth, grinning at him victoriously with orange-stained teeth.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She’s in her own kitchen, doing her homework at the table - careful not to get eraser dust from the fifth time she’s erased the algebra problem in front of her on her mother’s pristine table - when the door creaks open. Tara looks up at once, her ears pricking up in interest when she hears her mother’s heels clicking down the hall. 

Between work and Glenn’s band and her mother’s appointments, she hasn’t seen her in three days. She’s been trying to catch her for a week now.

“Hey, Mom…?”

She hates how her voice trails off. How everything she says to her mom turns into a question whether she means for it to or not.

“Yes?”

She doesn’t sound as pissed-off as usual. As surprised that Tara’s daring to speak to her. Tara takes that as a good sign and forges ahead. 

“...I’ve got something next Friday. For school.”

Her mother steps into the kitchen, glancing over at her. Tara looks like her mother, same face, same eyes, same everything. Like the printer spat out another copy by mistake. In another life maybe she’d be proud of that. 

“It’s me and Glenn. At the talent show.”

Her mother’s face furrows. “Glenn? The Chinese boy?”

Tara’s shoulders stiffen automatically. “He’s Korean, Mom.” The metallic tang of blood stings her mouth as she bites down on her cheek.

“Whatever.” She’s clanging around in the kitchen. Tara doesn’t look at her to find out why. “Talent show? You don’t have any talents.”

“We made a band. We’re playing a song. I was just wondering...if you maybe...if you wanted to come see it…?” Tara cringes at her own voice, fixating down on her paper stained grey with eraser marks, trying to make out the problem she can barely see anymore without really reading it at all.

Silence. The silence is long and painful. Drags on for what feels like hours.

“Maybe.”

Tara exhales. Lets her shoulders slump. The relief is visceral, like a thousand pounds being lifted from her back. 

“Thanks, Mom.”

She wonders how many other people see it as a favor when their mom tries to write them into their schedule. A schedule that never seems to have any give to it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The seat by her dad is still empty the fifth time Tara checks through the curtains. 

“She’s not coming,” she says numbly as the door at the back of the auditorium shuts with a resounding thud. “She’s not going to come.”

“You don’t know that-” Glenn, always the optimist, is already rallying around her, trying to keep her face from falling. “She could just be running late-”

Tara just shakes her head. Her eyes fall to the floor and she can’t seem to bring them back up again. Tears are burning her eyes like little drops of venom and there’s a lump at the back of her throat the size of a golf ball that she can’t swallow. The strap of Glenn’s old guitar is suddenly digging into her shoulder, and she sets it down quickly with a soft thud, hugging her arms to her chest as she tries to fight back tears.

“Shit, T-” Glenn grabs her arm, glancing nervously back at the curtain, and then tugs her away and into the boys’ dressing room - empty, except for a few piles of leftover costumes from the production of  _ The Crucible  _ where they’d worked sound and lights together. “Don’t  _ cry- _ ”

“I’m not  _ trying to! _ ” It comes out like a wail and Glenn takes a tiny step back, a half-panicked look washing over his face. 

“Okay, okay -  _ keep  _ not trying to-” Glenn pats her shoulder nervously, holding the guitar in one hand by the neck. “I don’t mean to push but  _ are you gonna be good to play _ -”

“I don’t  _ know,  _ Glenn!” It’s the closest Tara’s ever really come to yelling at him, and he steps back again, hurt flashing through his eyes. 

“Tara.” Glenn’s voice is still even. It’s always even. “Do you wanna do it?”

She mops at her eyes; she doesn’t know when the tears started flowing but they have and now her cheeks are wet and sticky. “I -  _ yes,  _ I want to do it, it’s  _ important  _ to you-”

“ _ You’re  _ important to me.” Glenn reaches out and pokes her in the arm, gently. “ _ You,  _ Tara Chambler. So if you don’t wanna do it, we won’t. I’ll go scratch us right now and we’ll ditch this place and go to Denny’s and have pancakes for dinner. Just tell me. Do you wanna do it?”

Tara means to nod; she really does. But something flicks on her autopilot and she’s shaking her head instead, tears still trickling down her cheeks, and Glenn nods and pulls her into a hug into which she immediately slumps, burying her face in his cotton t-shirt with a band that she’s pretty sure he’s never actually listened to plastered across the front. 

Glenn smells like Old Spice and laundry detergent and cheese puffs. Tara’s nose is smooshed up against his chest and his fingers get tangled in her hair when he tries to comb through it soothingly and absolutely nothing is going well for either of them.

She half-giggles tearily into Glenn’s shirt at the thought. 

“Screw this,” she says out loud, her fist tightening around a handful of Glenn’s shirt. “I just...pancakes. Please.”

“Hell yeah,” Glenn says, and he’s already calling his mom to tell her where to meet them as he and Tara walk arm-in-arm out of the auditorium.


End file.
